Inspired by a movie, a group of Huntsville residents gathered for the city’s first Mulletfest, celebrating the hairstyle known as business up front, party in the back.

Catherine Shearer, coordinator of the event, said she had the idea for paying homage to the mullet – a hairdo in which wearers keep their bangs short but let their locks grow freely in the back – after watching the movie “Mullet Men” in Montgomery.

The few dozen partygoers wore overalls, flannel shirts and sleeveless undershirts and dined on fried pigskins, Moon Pies and RC Cola. They watched mullet movies, received free mullet haircuts and competed in a mullet haiku contest.

“What entices me is not so much the haircut but the fact that 30,000 people show up at the beach every year to watch grown men throw fish,” Hubbard said. “But where the haircut is concerned, I guess there is a carnival aspect to its attraction.

“Onlookers are taken aback. In its way, it’s beauty I suppose. It’s the Venus de Milo of coiffures.”